Digital Revolution

Ebooks failed. Critics of ebook cite various reasons, including prices and the love for paper books, to explain why ebooks failed. While there is truth in these critiques, one can not but ask why ebooks failed to take off while research papers in electronic form became dominant. Although there is more to research publications that the digital revolution should promise, the raw digitization of papers already shows great advantage against printed papers. Digital copies are vastly easier to distribute, organize, and index. Web sites like arXiv are extremely popular for people to find papers. One reason is that ebooks are often technologically backward compared with the layout of printed content. Although Apple managed to revolutionize the ergonomics of reading through the iPad, the aesthetics didn't extend to Apple Books. It's worth noting that many beautiful interactive ebooks are published as apps, rather than ebooks, which demonstrates the versatility of the tablet platform...

By App Store's design, many developers release app upgrades as distinct apps, because there is no paid upgrade mechanism for a single app. The proliferation of different editions of a single app line is causing problems because there is often no data migration mechanism. Purchasing new editions of a app line means moving data in old apps all over again. It should not be that complex. App upgrades should be allowed to automatically migrate data from old apps for convenience. Lack of convenient data migration mechanism for app upgrades hurts both consumers and developers through reduced purchases. Although many apps employ cloud sync to bypass data migration issues, it has to be noted that not all apps have cloud mechanism, for some not even desirable. Likely, some app developers pulled their apps from the App Store because there is no sustainable upgrade routes. Let's hope it will turn out better both for consumers and developers.

Modern maps apps have extended functionalities far beyond traditional paper maps. Traditional paper maps serve few purposes beyond road navigation. Modern maps apps have multiple levels of zoom, detailed location labeling, and additional useful information like customer reviews. It's natural to integrate modern maps apps with yellow pages, that maps also serve as business contacts. The next phase of maps innovation might involve business presence. The difference between business presence and business contacts is illustrated by Google My Business. Google My Business not only allows companies to post contact information on maps, but also facilitates interactions like reviews and responses, urgent announcements, and usage statistics. Business presence is a huge win for Google Maps. However, it's also logical to regard Google My Business as merely a crude form of business presence. There is no room for marketing campaigns, detailed profiles, and QA. At present, these features belo...

There is something astonishing about Apple events that they are really successful. Few technological companies have high intensity events like Apple does. Perhaps they dare not. People may criticize Apple events, Apple may introduce controversies, but the spirit of sticking one's neck out is continuously forcing Apple to judiciously experiment with innovations. Everybody's eyes are focused on Apple events, and Apple has to deliver. Technologies are vast, but successful and tasteful technologies are few. Apple must cut through the mess with good judgement, and can not afford confusion and backwardness that plagued so many tech companies. Each Apple event is a test of time. There may be failures like Ping, but there can be no bullshit or nonsense, or people will eventually find out. Nobody knows if Google or Microsoft dares compete with Apple with their own high intensity events. It's easier to hide failures when nobody is watching, but arguably this cowardice is denying ...

Snowden complained that Google churned out misinformation and disinformation in addition to the right answer. Since Google is a search engine, rather than a knowledge engine, misinformation and disinformation served on the web, indexed by Google, pose real problems. Clearly, everyone should be educated to verify Internet content. However, the situation today has roots deeper than a search engine. The fundamental tenet of Internet freedom, net neutrality, specifically allowed misinformation and disinformation to be established and spread through the entire network. Digital rights activists tend to view net neutrality as a sacred principle, and yet refuse to accept the logical conclusion that proliferation of bullshit is protected. Freedom of speech accentuated by the Internet may produce bullshit at gigantic scale. It's hard to argue against freedom of speech. Thus, the hope is to reduce amplification of bullshit on the Internet. Banning accounts help, but systematic resolution re...

Like many innovations in infrastructure, email has gone from excitement to daily routine. The transformation email brought is real. There is much less need for postal services today. Yet many people miss the creativity and privacy allowed in postal services. Postcards can be a work of art, with messages delivered privately. It's a wonderful thing. Emails today lack wonders, which is why further innovation in email may be desirable. Actually, it's surprising that for Apple, which championed user experience, the standard of email can remain barely rich text for decades and stagnate. Imagine a totally redesigned email that lets users easily compose interactive multimedia postcards with cloud support that won't drain recipient's disk space. Emails can be exciting again. In the past few decades, the greatest improvement emails receive is storage in the cloud, rather than as local copies. Reliability went up significantly, at the cost of privacy sacrifices. But, technological...